“You get a federal judge involved, then you don’t have the danger of having political leadership that isn’t committed to the work.”
Alabama has 49 days after receiving notice from the DOJ to “satisfactorily” address the issues. The report enumerates “long-term” measures as well as “immediate” measures, such as a conversation among the Alabama Department of Corrections heads, the director of the National Institute of Corrections and DOJ officials within two weeks.
Initial discussions like this one may help gauge the parties’ willingness to negotiate and work with each other, said Chiraag Bains, who worked in the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division from 2010 to 2017 under the Obama administration. [...]
“You get a federal judge involved, then you don’t have the danger of having political leadership that isn’t committed to the work,” said former justice official Bains.
Bains says that it “takes a long time to turn around broken prison systems” and that it would be “very harmful” for the DOJ to only oversee reforms for three years.